Bitter
by Apathyisdeath
Summary: Shameless bit of angsty smut. Set two years after the events of KOTOR II, Atton rediscovers a broken and beaten Exile on an Outer Rim planet, chained to be presumably sold as a slave to the natives of the dingy, dirty planet. To rescue her is his only option, and her reaction to his run-down appearance is unpredictable. This is what happens when you let me have restored content.


Atton could no longer discern how long he had been on this Outer Rim planet. If this place could even be classed as a "planet": he had barely managed a meagre flight here, and, upon arrival, he had been greeted by no luxuries, no cantina and no city lights. No sign of _her_. But the pain of that was dull, now. How long had he been traversing these planets back and forth aimlessly? It had to have been at least a year since she had left him without saying goodbye. Then again, it had probably been about the same time since he had looked at his own reflection.

Getting the money to fuel his pitiful transport between worlds was manageable for one of his skill (very much thanks to her), but it was questionable if the aim of his half-baked quest was such a good idea. Atton took a lazy swig of whatever it was he drank. This city (if it could be called that) was horrific: its towering, built-up settlements were inhabited by more people than they should be, the congestion of the main "road" below was sickening, aimless. It was some odd rural, dusty, city, overpopulated only and majorly by the citizens' large and barefooted families.

He didn't even look for any sign of her anymore on each of these last few planets. On the first few, he had searched thoroughly and analytically, always the faithful student. A few dozen planets of dashed hopes later, and it was difficult to stray away from the vices he had let go of in her company. The Exile would return if it suited her, and he would not wait to be found as Carth had.

The poverty of the planet was obvious in this tiny cantina. He wasn't even completely sure it could be classed as a cantina. Some of the farmers of this city liked to gather in the inn in the middle of the city, and, although strangers were not unwelcome, they were wary of any strange newcomer who may be perched in the corner, looking thoroughly unwashed and very much the common criminal. Hypocrites, the lot of them; they themselves were as poor and aimless in their lives as he. Atton had purchased a small room for the night, one tiny and uncomfortable, yet not as filthy as the rest of the city seemed. He sniffed and drained the last of his foul-smelling drink, feeling suspicious eyes on the back of his head as he did so.

And that's when it sounded. Odd, scraping sounds; a panic out in the streets. Well, it was hardly a panic. It was a sound Atton had heard before, one that he was almost familiar with. The sound of a mob on the streets, one brimming with emotion in whatever they had completed. He brought himself up the hard steps to the balcony overlooking the street, casting his gaze to the dirty faces of a mob of a good hundred or so, its main section of conquest not in view. _Probably some rarely-successful hunting trip_, he guessed. Many of the people he had seen here were low-lives, not occupied with the matters of propriety and a civil tongue towards those they knew. They were greedy, grabbing at each little glimmer in the dust. Perhaps like himself before he had met the Exile.

His thoughts were back to her, and it was with that that he spied the main section of the mob. The dirty, toothless faces of the farmers were synoptic of their landscape, and the jeering expression they each wore only went some way to explain their collective nature. Atton was just about to turn to return to his room when he spotted her. _Her_. _Her! _His brain was instantly returned to that hazy, love stricken fool-of-a-mind, one so selfless and loving that no thought passed for his own self. Into that haze, he noticed her predicament. A tough, heavy collar of unknown material encircled her throat, cutting into the sensitive flesh he had once traced there. A glinting, thick chain trailed from the front and the back, manned easily on either side. Her hands were bound at her front, and, from her averted eyes, he could only guess her somehow stunned. Her feet were bound to closely limit her steps. Yet she still walked, and did not seem stunned? There was much about the Force she had not taught him.

Atton wasted no time in acting quickly.

* * *

"Hey!"

The Exile paid no heed to the voice calling above. It was familiar, the accent, the shape. The glimmer in it that indicated life. She hated what she had become. It was familiar in how all voices plainly are. She did not look up, resigning instead to watching the shapes her feet scuffed out in the dust as she took her steps forwards.  
"Hey, er...how much for the chained girl?" The voice called again. The old Exile of a year ago would have been massively affronted by the assertion of her as anything other than a woman, but this one was an emptier shell of that one.

Laughs were sounding around her as her captives plainly replied, naming her price, extolling her physical features in the most uncouth manner. Footsteps scraped around her, the slavers taking no care to protect her already bruised form. The collar encasing her neck being pulled and yanked to and fro, increasing the rouge that had already formed there. She was being led somewhere, she didn't know where; in the door, up the stairs to the second floor. So this was to be her fate...

The Exile resisted the urge to cringe as the door closed behind her and her newer captive.

* * *

Seeing the Exile after the best part of two years was incredible, not only to be reunited with her but in the very shock of her appearance. Her light locks had gotten marginally longer, trailing down the small of her back. She had never been traditionally beautiful (not to many, anyway), but the effect the warm weather had had on her was a kind one. Her eyes were constantly downcast to the floor, as if content to surrender to whatever happened to her. Her mouth was pursed together loosely, showing to him more than she wished. She had always been a small woman, deceivingly dainty-looking, he had always thought, but she was even thinner, her limbs not toned from her training anymore. She wore only a modest tunic and leggings, much as she always had, but this one covered in sand and torn about her chest as if her capture had not been an easy one. He recognised dried blood on the tears in her tunic's arms, and felt his jaw clench. If they had hurt her...

He brushed such violent thoughts from his mind. Atton had no idea where to start, and it seemed his voice had failed him. He wanted to remove her of that _thing _around her neck that insulted her as a great and powerful Jedi. He had seen overtly-sexualised slavegirls with more dignity. She flinched when he placed a cold hand on collar, a hand he quickly withdrew to his side again, almost as if he had been burnt by the contact. Atton sighed, steering her towards the bed and placing her down in order to somehow get her to look at him. He must have peered down at her for a good few minutes, drinking in her appearance.

"No offence, sir, but if you plan on attacking me, I suggest you act soon and swiftly." Her words were limpid, spoken in a dainty manner most unsuited to her. Still her eyes did not meet his. Atton felt the corners of his mouth twitch into an involuntary smile; even in dire situations she had a way to her. He knelt in front of her pitiful form.  
"I do _not _plan on doing anything like that," he smiled despite it all, lifting his eyes in an attempt to meet hers, "Trija."

Her eyes shot into movement as soon as he had said that, meeting his gaze unashamedly. She always been so socially confident, even when it would have done her well to be more tactful.  
"Who are you? How do you know my name?" She asked desperately, eyes widening with outrage. Atton grimaced inwardly. _This was bad_. If she could not recognise him, it was truly a dire sign.

"It's me, Atton," he stated softly, offering a palm to her. He did not really think this gesture through, more offering his hand to her as a gesture that he trusted her and that she should do the same.  
"I don't believe you," the Exile breathed in that haughty manner that had gotten him to fall in love with her in the first place, "Atton won't ever find us."  
"I beg to differ, sweetcheeks." He added the last as a password of sorts, showing her that he was the one who had originally been the only one daring enough to give her such petnames, petnames she detested so publicly aboard the _Hawk_. Her face darted up to meet his, moving from gazing down at his hand so near to hers.  
"Atton! It is you! You look so different!" She had grinned it, throwing herself into his arms as she did so, flesh colliding with flesh. The tears that had been welling in her eyes threatened to overspill in her happiness. "How did you find me?"  
"It is, it is me," he soothed, stroking her soft hair tenderly. "I don't know how I've gotten to find you again. How are you here, Trija? What's happened with Revan?"  
"I haven't found her yet," the Exile sniffed into Atton's shoulder, face screwed up in agony. "I can't find her. It's like...I feel as if the Force is just out of my reach. As if the Exile is attempting to make her return and claim my body back. I can't find Revan, Atton. I've tried, I've kriffing tried but I can't..."  
"It's OK, Trija, it's alright." Atton tried to comfort, feeling as if failed miserably. "We know roughly where she could be, and we have the means to look for her. It's gonna be OK."  
The Exile paused to bring her face from his shoulder to the position she had sat in, eyeing him as she did not fully true. He busied himself about the room, finding a knife to remove her collar and tossing it to an invisible crevice of the room before repositioning himself. It felt amazingly odd to gaze into her eyes again, feeling as if they now were flirting in the cargo hold of the _Ebon Hawk _after an especially-long training session. It was strange to think that their flirtations, despite its intentions and its kisses, had never truly led further than that in physicalities.

"And, hey, er, it might not mean much to you, but you always have me to help you look. I haven't trained for a while, but it's not like I'll completely slow you down. I can still fight, and I haven't forgotten all my training. I might be a bit rusty, but-"  
He was interrupted by her swift action of meeting his lips with her own, bringing them crashing down swiftly. Atton was no inexperienced schoolboy, he knew how to effectively react to one such a surprise kiss, expertly molding his own lips to hers. She gave a little sound of pleasure in that he had reciprocated, and the timbre of it sent a shoot of pleasure through him as well. He placed his hands on her, tentatively at first, then becoming reacquainted with some familiar terrain.

"I have missed you," she gasped between rough kisses, "so much. Missed us."  
Atton growled an agreement, pushing softly on her shoulders in a gesture that intended her to fall back onto the bed. He did not want to hurt her considering the state he had found her in. She fell back, quickly manipulating to be atop him. Each set of hands roved territory in hand not been around in too long, the flesh of the one they loved, a love that had not dulled in their long time apart. It wasn't until he had removed what stood as the dusty remnants of her tunic and leggings that he realised what they were about to do.  
"Are you sure this-" he gestured to them both "-is what you want? Here, at a time like this?"  
"Atton, the only thing keeping me from having my way with you in that cargo hold years ago was the Jedi Code, and I no longer class myself a Jedi."

Atton went to object, but found her too distracting to keep him focussed on other matters. He was far too weak for her to be able to object, safe in the knowledge that he had plenty of time to question her afterwards.

She bucked her hips to meet his, surprisingly eager for perhaps one who had been famously known as the most proper and most virginal of any Jedi at the Enclave (yet, if Atton remembered correctly, quite popular amongst predatory men like he had been for such qualities during the war), especially compared to Revan. That one was a sultry and teasing, dark-haired woman, quite the stark opposite of the Exile he held in his eager arms. Revan and her Exile had gotten along famously, strange considering how Atton found the former an annoyance yet the latter a selfless, angelic maiden of old. But perhaps he looked at that with all his bias and poet's heart.

He rid himself quickly of his remaining clothing that hindered them. Atton reveled in her small hands, tracing what he could feel as the various lacerations, aged bruises and scars across the well-toned chest there. He grimaced underneath her scrutiny, simultaneously enjoying her caring and feather-light touch. He seized her hands in his own eventually, placing them around his back as he went.

"I do love you," the Exile gasped between kisses, readying herself, "and you musn't ever forget it."  
"I know," he smiled into her kiss, breaking to kiss his way down to her collarbone and back again, reveling in this little angel of a woman who had found her way back to him somehow. The universe was merciful again. "I love you, too. Until the end of time."

She did not smile into him, but he sensed the contentment from her as she traced eager patterns on his back and shoulders.  
"Ready?" He questioned.  
"Ready." She beamed assertively at the man.

He filled her well, eliciting a wide-eyed gasp from her at first, and throes of noise later on. Her spurring on of him a memory he would capture well. Nor would she forget the contentment, the waves of pleasure washing over her body as she lay there, panting in a tangle of limbs.  
"I should have done that years ago," she breathed, grinning over at him as she moved the lay next to him (or rather, on top of him to an angle, as the bed would only allow).  
"I wish you had," he agreed indefinitely, "it surely would've saved the rest of the crew a lot of trouble listening to our arguments."  
The Exile pressed a palm to her forehead. "We were actually that bad, weren't we?"  
"Yup."  
"I thought that I would never see you again for sure." Trija half-whispered, lifting her face a fraction to meet his. He shrugged at the happenstance, searching for words.  
"I-I..." In his happiness, words had left him.  
"I never thought you could look so different," the Exile laughed, gesturing to his face before laying a hand on his cheek there.  
"You don't like the dashing cantina rat look?" Atton gasp in mock offense. Trija pretended to think on it momentarily.  
"Hmm, yes, I do like a certain one cantina-goer," she said, "but I much prefer his..._clean_ look."  
"It's a good look."  
"Get some sleep." She half-commanded, stroking a thumb across his cheek with the hand that lay there._ Once a general... _"The Force will grant us our time. I'm here."  
Her words were beautifully soothing to one who had ached these past two years for the one he loved, search blindly for her. Words from a woman that had a healing power to her. Words that, as he drifted towards sleep, had him imagining the coming decades of their future in their simple power.

"You have to promise to stay and tell me of all you've done and all you plan to do." He said, turning to face her fully. "We're finding Revan, where ever she's gotten herself to."  
The Exile nodded, smiling peacefully.  
"And I shall explain everything to you in the morning," she murmured, nuzzling into the warm crook of his neck.  
"If you're sure." Atton smiled, looking down at her bare form.  
"I am. Now sleep. I love you, always."  
"And I love you," he felt a light kiss ghost over his lips as he repeated the words to her, safe in the knowledge of her tantalising flesh beside his own undeserving, coarse, and scar-marked skin. If he had his way, he would be feeling her beside him every night from now on.

* * *

He awoke alone, finding her gone from the bed. She had pulled the covers up over them during the night, that much he remembered of the nightly interruptions. Atton dressed quickly in the cold of the early morning, rising to look for her in the 'fresher. No sign of her.

He paused indefinitely. _It can't be_.


End file.
